


Bone White and Shadows Deep

by Kara_luna



Series: The Grisha Trilogy No One Wanted and No One Needed [2]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alarkling - Freeform, Alina is not an orphan, Alina is the bastard daughter of the king, Alternate Universe, BAMF Alina, BAMF Darkling, Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Good Darkling, Kinda, Time Travel, the king gets what he deserves, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27186292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: Alina is born to the same story with a new twist.She once wondered if there was a reason for her light. There wasn’t. Now there is. Now, she’s a little orphan girl and a rage filled woman all at once.Alina is a contradiction.And she will bring the kingdom to its knees to make her people safe. She will bring the most powerful Grisha in the world to his knees before her.And he will do it willing.Alina is Aline and Zasha and Nikolai and Aleksander and every person whose story is her own.Aline’s story is a tragic fairytale ending, and this is how it starts.
Relationships: Mal Oretsev & Alina Starkov, Mal Oretsev/Alina Starkov, Onsided, Tamar Kir-Bataar/Nadia Zhabin, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova & Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov, mentioned
Series: The Grisha Trilogy No One Wanted and No One Needed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081700
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	Bone White and Shadows Deep

Alina wakes with memories that aren’t hers but are and blood that’s never been hers but now resides in the branches of her heart’s tree, spreading to her fingertips where leaves lay flat and wide and her feet where the roots sink into the earth. 

The sunlight warms her face even beneath the roof of a manor that was home and wasn’t at the same time. Alina’s life is a tragedy but it’s also the fairytale story of an ordinary girl who became a legend. 

Alina’s life is a living contradiction. 

Boy is born with majestic power, but is all alone. No one can understand the darkness in his eyes, no one can stand as his equal and stave off the cruel uniqueness of magic that belongs in another world. 

Doomed by his grandfather and failed by his mother, no father in sight, the boy waits a millennium for a girl. 

Girl is born, all alone and sad, cut off from the sun she so craves. He is a creature of darkness, and her of light. The balance to each other, opposites but the same. He finds her. 

He loses her. 

He finds her and gifts her a beautiful necklace of bone imbued with power that takes her sunbursts and turns them into planets. 

He loses her. 

He finds her and gifts her a creature that sings an angel’s sorrow to the sea where there is no answer. The power earned turns her swirling planets into blazing galaxies. The scales clasped to her wrist gives her soul back a piece it has lost many generations ago. 

He loses her. 

He finds her when they meet again in a church. She kisses him. A man throws her over his shoulder and escapes to a winding path of tunnels beneath the chapel of sunlight. 

He loses her. 

He finds her. 

He loses her.

He finds her.

Then, finally after so many years of yearning and searching, scrambling for leads and truths in the rambling of a madman, they meet one last time. A man stands between them, in love with the girl with hair like brittle ice. 

She kills him. 

He lives anyway. 

The boy does not. He dies and in his last moments, he whispers one last plea to the girl. He chased her through every universe and every setting sun and every single star that shone above both their heads, and his last wishes are meant for no one more worthy than her. 

He begs to be dust, nothing left of him to be desecrated. 

She agrees, for it is the last thing she can give him. She holds him as he fades and leaves, breathes shuttering to a close as another heart begins to beat anew. She loses her light and he loses his darkness. 

The girl burns with the boy, for there is no other way it could have been but this. 

The story of a boy and a girl ends with a funeral pyre. 

But the boy who chased the girl? He killed thousands, enslaved her, butchered innocents, almost swallowed the world in his darkness calling it peace… And she loved someone else for as long as she lived. She did not want her light or him. He was more than a boy and she was more than a girl. 

They’re story is a fairytale, but it’s also a tragedy. It’s a beautiful storybook ending, but also a terrible horror story. Their story is many many things… but one remains through every variation. 

They’re story is many things but among all else, it is  _ great.  _

Terrible and sad and unfair and cruel, but  _ great.  _

Just as the boy and the girl were. 

>>>>>>>>>

Alina remembers the bare bones of her story’s flesh. The writing on a book’s spine compared to the writing within its pages. She knows little, but more than she did the other times and that changes things. That changes her. 

Time is infinite, neverending, but it is also a circle, looping over and over again. This story repeats again and again with the same characters, same plot, at the same point in time. Morozova, then the Darkling, then Alina, then Nikolai, and so on and so on, time continues. But it also restarts eventually and the song is sung again. 

The audience is the same it’s always been. 

Time is infinite but it’s also circular, and the fates have watched Alina’s pain for millennium and they will watch for a millennium more. Until the end of all things, they will  _ watch.  _

But then, something changes. A finger dips into the lake and a tiny ripple is felt through all of time and space as something in the machine’s infinite cogs shift and refit. Something has changed. 

A stag, a serpent, a boy. 

But now, the light has been given a reason. 

A stag, a serpent, a boy,  _ and the girl.  _

A father once brought his child back from the beyond with a horrible magic, and doomed another. His daughter regained a soul, but it was not hers. Another girl, from a village in the plantations of Zemeni collapsed in the Jurda fields of her father that day. 

Her mother could do nothing but sooth her with honey and a cool cloth at her head as she faded away. The girl whose soul was stolen. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.  _ Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfa _ **_ir. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair . Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. U_ ** **nfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.** **_Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Un_ ** _ fair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.  _ _ Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. U _ _ nfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.  _ **** **Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. U** nfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. U _ nfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfai _ r. **Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.** **Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfa** ir. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair . Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Un _ fair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.  _ _ Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.  _

  
  


The Stag sang, the Serpent screamed, the boy burned. 

  
  


A little girl with chocolate skin like the molasses her muma loves in her rum wakes as the fever breaks on the last day before a grand festival. A festival for the harvest. Her parents are left speechless by the beautiful blooms they find that year, hidden away where they could have sworn the buds had not lived. Stalks of sunset orange with white highlights like lightning hide between the reds and yellows of jurda flowers. 

Those special plants only they seem able to grow, sustain them comfortably for the rest of their days. And one of those days, when they’re old and gray, their sweet little girl with wildflower curls falls for a boy traveling from far away. 

A boy who holds hearts in his hands. 

She leaves them with the brush of a kiss to their cheeks, eyes wet with tears she has not shed since that day in her bed when she burned with an untamable fever. Her parents turn to each other as her racing figure is sunlit by the fading embers of noon, rushing towards the skiff that will bring her to her new home, a boy with a crooked nose standing aboard with a soft smile for his harshly boned face. 

Lavi caresses her husband's freckled cheek, kissed so soundly by the sun that even his dark skin has speckled constellations written like love letters across it. They know she will find something more with a boy like this. 

A boy with a name and fortune waiting for him, gold laden in his blood despite his desire to escape it. He will give her more than Jurda pastures and small festivals of children with sticky fingers and little paper mache masks. 

Zasha’s curls, tight and short against her skull, rustle in the breeze. Manene whispers into the breeze a long loved phrase even though his daughter’s grinning face is too far away to know from where she waves from the railing. 

The boy grasps her waist quickly before she can tip over the ship’s edge in her enthusiasm. Zasha simply sticks both arms out and waves even more vigorously, yelling something like a goodbye, though she must know they cannot hear her. 

Atop the small hedge the words, “Adawesi zowa can,” echo to two Zemeni farmers who were marked by neither darkness nor light and yet gave so much beauty and hope back to the world without ever knowing it.  _ We fight for the blessed day.  _ And they always will, even as their little sunflower faded into the horizon. 

The clever fox and the woman he’s fallen in love with disappear across the waves and the story goes on. 

>>>>>>>>>>

Alina wakes and she knows bits and pieces. She knows who she is incomprehensibly. She knows the blood that pools in her nail bitten palms or splatters along the rocks when she falls and slits her palm on a slick boulder. 

She knows it even though the others don’t. Ana Kuya glares when she sees Alina out of bed, beats her arms with the switch to make the lesson sink in, but Alina still sneaks out each night to see the moon from somewhere other than her window. 

It feels wrong. To see the moon between the two edges of her window frame, caged between two bars. Too large to ever escape through such a small crack in it’s prison. Alina does not understand that. 

She sits and stares at the sun for hours out her window. 

Alina grows, and she does not grow sickly this time. She’s always known she’s no beauty and she’s right. Alina is less than average with her pale skin bordering on blotchy and thin hair like muddy straw… But Alina’s skin cuts like every other child and her bones do not creak when she chases the new boy around the gardens. 

She laughs as a child should without a rasp or breathless gasp. 

Aline finds a sunflower growing by the orphanage’s side, right under the window of the library. The boy dares her to reach through the window and grab it. She shoves him out of it for his teasing. 

The girl doesn’t realize his gaze is fixed to her crooked teeth when she throws her head back and laughs. She doesn’t feel the heat at her smile, her shoulders, her joy. There is much Alina knows, but not this. 

She does not know Mal loves her. 

>>>>>>>>

Alina sits in a cartographer's tent finishing her sketches a day before she is to brave the fold for the first time. 

She hopes it's her last, glancing around herself at the other apprentices bent over their work. 

“I’ll give you my dinner rations if you fake a sketch for me.” She whispers to Alexi. He doesn’t even look at her, gaze fixed to his stupidly perfect sketches. 

“Depends.” He crooks an eyebrow still not looking. “Will you finally follow my advice.”

Her cheeks go hot. Alina kicks his ankle under the table, smiling sweetly at his muffled swears. 

“Fine, fine, you awful woman. But no more kicking.” He sticks his hand out. Aline wraps his fingers with her own and shakes firmly. Muttering a quick thanks, she slips from the tent. No one even looks up. 

She knows she’s not the most social person but at least one person realizing she was leaving would have helped. What's the point of sneaking anywhere if no one even cares, she grumbles to herself. 

A bawdy laugh draws her eye to the campfire and her eyes snap back to the front. She ignores the sound of his voice, preaching to the enthralled audience that no doubt includes Ruby with her gorgeous hair and gorgeous face and gorgeous everything. 

Alina’s fist clenches at the thought. She hustles the rest of the way. Right beside the edge of the Grisha’s tent, between the stream and the tent, there’s a ledge over the water. The stream, more of a gorge, is driven into the landscape, making the bank a good eight feet tall and steep with it’s crumbling mud walls. 

Alina has practice. She slips down the grassy decline with the ease of someone who no longer fears the fall. Slipping under the rocky nook no one else seems to know about, Alina sits down harshly on the pebbles. 

It’s peaceful here. The stream bubbles gently before her and the water is warm against her fingertips when she leans forward to dip them into the frothing serpent. The moon sits high in the sky, and Alina thinks of the fold and it’s darkness. 

Of Mal and his friends and flashes of his deep blue eyes and silhouette invade her mind, tearing at the tethers holding her frayed heart together. They’ve not talked much for months. They’ve not talked at all since a pretty Grisha had hung out a black coach’s window and smiled at Mal. 

And he’d looked at her like she was the sun. 

The jealousy naws like the hunger in her belly, and suddenly, furiously, Alina stands up. The moon is casting rays over her face and through her hair and Aline wants to do something. Something,  _ something.  _

Her fingers nearly rip the buttons out of her coat as they tear the fabric off her body until she stands in only her undergarments. The breeze is on the verge of chilly and she briefly considers what she’s doing. 

No. No more thinking. Stealing herself, she steps into the water. Somehow it seems to get warmer the further she wades in until her shoulders barely peak out of the surface. It’s peaceful. And quiet. 

She tilts her head back, basking in this warmth. Face against the moon, her jealousy and hurt and anger all fade away until there’s nothing but the darkness. It wraps around her like an old friend, holding her head from falling beneath the serpent’s scales. 

Right there in the water, there is no Alina or Aline or Ana or Alexi or king…

Or Mal. 

It’s only when returning, faintly shivering with dripping hair to her bunk that Alina allows the world to touch her again. It hurts, a ripping in her chest, that not one person stayed up to make sure she was alright. Not one person looked for her, told someone she was gone. 

Just like every other night. 

It’s only when laying in her bed, pillow quickly becoming damp and uncomfortable with her wet hair rubbing at the back of her neck and the sheets hard and uncomfortable under her… 

She realizes she was floating on the stream’s surface. 

>>>>>>>>

The fold closes around them and Alina feels fear like nothing else consume her. Mal’s fingers find her, wrapping them up like protection. A part of her, vindictive and dark, wants to pull away and leave him alone. 

Leave him untethered and reeling in the darkness with no compass. But the other part, the one that blinks in warm sunshine, the stronger part, clutches him back as her last lifeline. She wants him to wrap her up in his arms and shield her from the rocking of the skiff beneath their boots and the eerie silence blanketing them. 

Then- “Listen.” He whispers and Alina hears. She hears the wingbeats. Closer and closer until they’re so loud they must nearly be upon them. Alina is terrified. Aline knows. 

She knows and no one is dying this time. Like a moth to a flame, she huddles closer to Mal, knowing that she’d rather the whole skiff burn than lose him. She holds his shirt in her hands and drags his face down to hers. 

“Alina wh-” 

“No ones dying today, Mal.  _ No one.”  _ She lets him go.

**_(She lets him_ ** **_go._ ** )

He reaches for her asking what she’s talking about, caution in his tone as he senses it. Just as he sensed her mischief the day she switched Ana Kuya’s lipstick with red paint. 

He grabs for her, yelling her name, but Aline is already marching to the skiff’s center. 

The inferi yell for her to get back to the edge, the squaller shouts at them to stay in position. The Vulcra screech overhead. Without another thought, Aline and Alina throw their hands to the sky and  _ shine.  _

>>>>>>>>>

They drag her to the Grisha’s tent conscious this time. 

The guards are rough, dragging her through the tent as women in dark kefta giggle and the men sneer to each other, all eyes mockingly on this pathetic little girl being dragged through their hall. 

Aline barely stops herself from sneering back at them all. 

They shove her into a room. Turning she prepares to let loose her insults and screeches, demand to be led back to her tent. She startles at their bowed figures. Silently straightening with blank faces and leaving. 

She turns slowly. 

He sits in a chair of ebony and steel. There’s no crown in his ink black hair, but the way he reclines comfortably in his throne gives the impression that there should be. She’s impressed despite herself. 

“Why am I here.” She demands. 

“Why indeed.” He hums thoughtfully, unfolding from his seat. He moves slowly towards her, every step feeling like miles. “Where have you been hiding all this time, little sunbeam?” He asks, running his thumb down her cheek. 

Confused she backs away, nearly tripping over her own feet. 

“What- What are you doing?!” She sputters, fear forgotten. He says nothing, watching her. 

(Does he know does he know does he  _ remember?) _

The fear returns, pounding on her chest like a caged bear.  _ He will eat you alive.  _

“Guards.” And suddenly there are men in black uniforms behind her. She whirls mouth open, poison waiting on her tongue. “Escort Alina Starkov to my coach.” 

“What- No!” She whirls around but he’s already clucking his tongue at her, quartz eyes unreadable. He turns away from her and his guards’ hands close around her wrists. 

“No! No I’m not going  _ anywhere  _ with you!” She spits, wrenching her hands out of their grip. A man with frost colored eyes reaches for her, a sneer on his lips, she readies to use every ounce of military training she’s got- 

Her arms drop to her sides as she sways. Her heart beat slows and she tips, black creeping in on the sides of her vision. She only whispers one more  _ no  _ before her body is being swept up in strong arms and Alina is lost to the world. 

>>>>>>>>>>

She wakes to her coach being ambushed. There’s a soldier dead by the open door and the man - Fedyor, Aline knows - has a bullet wound in his arm. The other is already gone, in the thick of fighting no doubt. 

A large man with blonde hair bursts through the doorway over the corpse and she screams, scrambling away, tearing through the remains of the window screen and tumbling into grass. She crawls until her feet find ground and then she’s running through trees and moss, putting as much distance as she can between herself and the sound of a man screaming for the witch to stop running. 

He catches her, bowling her over in a tumble of limbs. She strikes out with the only punch she knows and he grabs her arms, easily overpouring the small girl that she is. The terror is a suffocating blanket of horror that cuts out everything but his fanatical eyes staring down at her.

Like corrupted stars. 

Then, something seeps into her awareness, wrapping around her as if calling her to its protection. And something else inside her, familiar and warm and certain, answers the call more than willingly. It seeps through her, this thing, and she is aware of one other than the man atop her. 

“I’m here!” She screams like a prayer. Her head turns and sees him immediately, just as she knew she would somehow. It scares her, to know. It scares Alina. But Aline is more and the same and less and everything and she is  _ a contradiction.  _

Aline wants to smile. Alina wants to cry. 

But the Freyja man pinning her grins maniacally. He has hit his point she realizes with horror and pity and rage. Everyone has a point. Their mind breaks, unable to comprehend. All understanding of reality is lost to them, sometimes slowly but steadily, sometimes in one quick snap. 

His point started long ago, she realizes. 

“Come any closer Darkling and I’ll gut the witch where she lies.”

Atop his black mare, he watches them serenely. Alina wants to scream at him to do something. To be angry or scared or something because she’s felt like this far too long. Like she’s dying, and no one has ever cared and  _ won’t someone care?! _

Aline sees. She settles into the grass and watches his cool eyes, like moonstones in the dusk, and waits. She still fights the urge to smile. 

“Release her, and I will allow you to run back to your foul king’s skirts.” He replies, his mare taking another step forward. 

“No no no.” He giggles, eyes wild as the knife is pressed to the soft flesh at her throat. Alina stops herself from swallowing, terrified a jerk in the wrong direction will end it all. The metal glints as it reels back. “You will  _ never  _ have the witch's power.  _ Never!”  _

The knife plunges towards her and Alina curls into herself with a sob. A crack erupts into the air. 

  
  
  


She uncurls. 

  
  
  


Her mouth opens in a wordless scream as the corpse tumbles down onto her. Her fingers cake with dirt as she scrambled backwards away from the horrible remains of a man slashed in two. 

She’s shaking so hard she can’t think straight. The man’s insides are everywhere, they’re on  _ her,  _ and Alina can’t  _ think.  _ She is petrified. 

He approaches her, steps even. Kneeling beside her, he grasps her chin. “Eyes on me, Alina.” He commands. 

The man’s mouth is open in horror too, she realizes numbly. Like he’s still screaming, even in death. Her face is turned strongly away again. Eyes skim greedly over his beautiful face, the curves of his cheek and bow of his lip, everything so that she no longer must look at the mutilation before her. 

Aline wants many things. But she settles for watching his mind work behind those magnificent eyes of his. She settles for this much for now, for she knows that she will soon have it all. And Aline will never settle again. 

Alina faints. 

>>>>>>>

She wakes held in two strong arms, face pressed into a warm neck. The crease between their shoulder and throat, and she doesn’t want to move. She nuzzles into them further before realizing what she's doing. 

She pushes back but her jittery muscles are nothing compared to those holding her tightly. The muscles in his back flex and she feels her tongue scrape the top of her teeth. 

“I expected you to sleep much longer than that.” Is his only reply to her wakefulness. 

“I’ve never fainted before. Perhaps I haven’t perfected it yet.” She mumbles, lost. 

“I do hope you won’t be practicing anytime soon.” He says. 

She’s lowered back to the ground. Her legs feel like pudding and she nearly topples over before grasping his arm for balance. His dark eyes watch her unblinking. Blushing, she pulls back, fixing her attention on the black mare beside them. 

“Where will I be riding?” She asks. 

“Don’t ask questions you know the answer to.” He smoothly mounts, holding a hand to her. 

Alina supposes that’s fair at the very least. She takes his hand and less than gracefully slides onto the horse in front of him. She’s never rode before with someone else. Fingers gently brush the hair at the back of her neck, finding the skin beneath. 

Her heart slows again and she faintly registers her eyes fluttering shut before she’s once again swallowed by a peaceful darkness. 

>>>>>>>>>

Alina rides her own horse for two days. 

She waddles when they make camp, the sores under her thighs making the thought of sitting a horrible one. She doesn’t even consider asking one of the guards for help. They’re blank expressions when they look at her reminds her all too clearly where they stand and where she now stands. 

It takes two days before she breaks. 

She waits until he’s alone, face aflame already. He’s running a hand down his mare’s mane, gentleness she didn’t anticipate and that nearly makes her stumble to a stop. 

Aline’s grin is hidden but there. She was right. 

Alina steps forward trying to keep her back straight in his presence as he turns his attention to her and only her. It’s an intoxicating, dangerous, terrifying thing. To be the only one he’s looking at. 

She doesn’t even open her mouth before he’s offering his hand with a half smile. She takes it without a word, trying desperately to retain her dignity as she gasps aloud when he pulls her closer and lifts her by the waist to place her onto his mount. 

He swings up behind her, settling the reins between his fingers. His arms bar her in on both sides and Alina’s almost constant fear of following over the side is placated momentarily. 

They leave the camp and continue on for another five days. The soreness on her thighs fades fast as he adjusts her form, pushing her into the correct position paintently. After the second day of riding with him, she’s able to ride with minimal soreness. 

She still rides with him the last three days of their journey. He says nothing each day as she comes to him with the same ducked head, waiting for some jeer or insult. His head tilts instead, thoughtful, and he offers her his hand. 

They reach the little palace. 

>>>>>>>

They enter, they perform, and they’re applauded. The king stays silent. Alina thinks he hates her. Aline knows the truth. Alina does too, but she’s buried Aline under layers of denial and rejection for years, burying herself beneath the rubble of a chapel she convinces herself doesn’t exist, never existed, and never will exist. 

But Aline bides her time. 

The king dismisses his guards. All of them. She can see the Darkling straightening beside her, calculating eyes intrigued. Alina is scared. 

Aline is  _ angry.  _

“It’s been too long.” The king murmurs wondrously, more sombre then either of them have ever heard from such a fool of a monarch. 

“Not long enough.” Aline replies flatly. The Darkling’s eyes snap to her, scanning her body, as if looking for the answers he senses are about to be revealed. No, she contemplates, he’s looking for the questions. He has no need for answers when he has not the questions they answer. 

“I’ve missed you.” He tries again. Eyes flickering to the Queen. Her too blue eyes are confused, snapping back and forth from her husband to a girl with light in her soul that’s nothing more than a peasant in her eyes. 

The court watches on with viciously excited eyes. Greedy and hungry for gossip. And Aline will give it to them. And to Genya who stands behind the queen watching her confusedly and every Grisha in the room, she’s doing this for them too. To Sergei who only wanted to be safe despite his arrogance. Marie who only wants to be something special to someone despite her gossip. 

Nadia who loved Tamar and Tolya who verbally sparred Zoya standing like a beautiful statue in the mass of blue keftas to her right. To David who didn’t come and the children who play in their gardens on the other half of the palace. 

For Aleksander who’s served despite his power. 

“I’ve missed nothing of this city.” 

She sees the way he crumples. Genya’s eyes hold satisfaction, eating up the king’s pain in a way Aline knows makes her feel far more guilty than she should. This is not an attack, Aline purrs to little Alina who shakes her head in dismay, powerless dismay, this is  _ revenge.  _

“Please…” He starts. Eyes flicker to his wife again, her haughty face pulled tight with rage. “Please, come home my Aline.” He even rises from his throne, as if he’ll come to her if she will not come to him. The determination in his eyes tells her he just might.

That only makes Aline that much angrier. 

“My home is in Keramzin.  _ Where I was left like the bastard I am.”  _ She replies, eyes cold as ice. Alina wails at the darkness she caresses in her heart. Aline pities that child, but she will not give up what is hers. And this? This  _ pain?  _ It is  _ hers.  _

“Please-”

“I will not be like you, my  _ king.  _ Not now, not ever.” Her hand slips into the crook of the Darkling’s arm without as much as a glance. Her eyes locked with the king. “And I am  _ not your daughter.”  _

She turns and leaves with the only king she’s ever known by her side. 

>>>>>>>>>>

Aline destroys the fold, unites Ravka, and rules as it’s queen.

Aline sees her father only once before he is gone from the capital with the wife that was not her mother and the weakling son who she would never allow in her court (not with the way he sneers at the clever fox she holds so dear - her little brother). 

Aline has the blood of a little Zemeni girl who grew the most beautiful lightning tinged flowers her village ever saw, and set Ravka aflame with the wildfire love she had for a man who became great - for the woman at his side would allow no less. 

Aline is Alina, and the symbol once used by the boy is used for the girl as well. 

Aline is the sun who eclipses the moon, and Aleksander is the moon who eclipses the sun. 

“Adawesi zowa can,”  _ we fight for the blessed day.  _

And one ripple started a tragic fairytale anew. 


End file.
